Overview
Two Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities have been identified impact a older versions of the Symantec Decomposer when parsing RAR archive content for malicious content.

Products Affected

Products

Versions

Builds

Update To

Symantec AntiVirus for Network Attached Storage

4.3.16.39 & earlier

All

4.3.18.43

Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine

4.3.16.39 and earlier

All

4.3.18.43

Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine for Caching

4.3.16.39 & earlier

All

4.3.18.43

Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine for Clearswift

4.3.16.39 & earlier

All

4.3.18.43

Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine for Messaging

4.3.16.39 & earlier

All

4.3.18.43

Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine for MS ISA

4.3.16.39 & earlier

All

4.3.18.43

Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine for MS SharePoint

4.3.16.39 & earlier

All

4.3.18.43

Symantec AntiVirus/Filtering for Domino MPE(AIX, Linux, Solaris)

All

All

3.2.2

Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange

4.6.5.12 and earlier

All

4.6.8.120

5.0.4.363.and earlier

All

5.0.6.368

Symantec Scan Engine

5.1.4.24 and earlier

All

5.1.6.31

Products Not Affected

Products

Versions

Builds

Norton AntiVirus

All

All

Norton AntiVirus for Macintosh

All

All

Norton Personal Firewall

All

All

Norton System Works

All

All

Norton360

All

All

Norton Internet Security

All

All

Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition

All

All

Symantec AntiVirus for Handhelds

All

All

Symantec AntiVirus for HandHelds - Corporate Edition

All

All

Symantec AntiVirus for Macintosh

All

All

Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam

All

All

Symantec Client Security

All

All

Symantec Client Security for Nokia

All

All

Symantec Clientless VPN Gateway 4400 Series

All

All

Symantec Endpoint Protection

All

All

Symantec Enterprise Firewall

All

All

Symantec Firewall / VPN Appliance

100/200

All

Symantec Gateway Security

All

All

Symantec Gateway Security 300/400 Series

2.0

All

Symantec Gateway Security 5000 Series

3.0.1

All

Symantec Gateway Security 5400 Series

2.0.1

All

Symantec Internet Security for Macintosh

All

All

Symantec Mail Appliance

All

All

Symantec Mail Security for Domino NT

All

All

Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange

6.0.X

All

Symantec Mail Security for SMTP

All

All

Symantec System Works for Macintosh

All

All

Symantec Web Security

All

All

Symantec Web Security for Microsoft ISA 2004

All

All

Note: Only currently supported Symantec Products are being updated. Customers using unsupported versions are encouraged to upgrade to a supported version.

Details
Two DoS vulnerabilities were identified of Symantecís Decomposer engine related to scanning RAR archive content. The first issue is triggered when it receives malicious content. If sufficiently malformed, this could possibly cause large amounts of memory to be consumed which could result in a Denial of Service. The second issue is a buffer overflow that can cause the decomposer to crash causing a Denial of Service condition and the potential for remote code execution.

Symantec Response
Symantec engineers have verified and corrected these issues in affected versions of supported products.

Updates are available for affected products. Symantec recommends customers apply the latest product update available for their supported product versions to enhance their security posture and protect against potential security threats of this nature.

Symantec is not aware of any customers impacted by this issue, or of any attempts to exploit the issue.

Symantec product users who regularly launch and run LiveUpdate should already have received an updated (non-vulnerable) version of (product/component). However, to ensure all available updates have been applied, users can manually launch and run LiveUpdate in Interactive mode as follows:

To perform a manual update using Symantec LiveUpdate, users should:

Open any installed Symantec product

Click on LiveUpdate in the toolbar

Run LiveUpdate until all available Symantec product updates are downloaded and installed

Best Practices
As part of normal best practices, Symantec strongly recommends:

Restrict access to administration or management systems to privileged users.

Run under the principle of least privilege where possible to limit the impact of exploit by threats such as this.

Keep all operating systems and applications updated with the latest vendor patches.

Follow a multi-layered approach to security. Run both firewall and antivirus applications, at a minimum, to provide multiple points of detection and protection to both inbound and outbound threats.

Deploy network intrusion detection systems to monitor network traffic for signs of anomalous or suspicious activity. This may aid in detection of attacks or malicious activity related to exploitation of latent vulnerabilities

CVE
This issue is a candidate for inclusion in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems. The CVE initiative has assigned CVE-2008-0308 and CVE-2008-0309 for these issues.

Credit
Symantec would like to thank iDefense for reporting these issues and providing full coordination while Symantec resolved them.

Symantec takes the security and proper functionality of our products very seriously. As founding members of the Organization for Internet Safety (OISafety), Symantec supports and follows the principles of responsible disclosure. Symantec also subscribes to the vulnerability disclosure guidelines outlined by the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC).

Please contact secure@symantec.com if you feel you have discovered a security issue in a Symantec product. A Symantec Product Security team member will contact you regarding your submission. Symantec strongly recommends using encrypted email for reporting vulnerability information to secure@symantec.com. The Symantec Product Security PGP key can be found at the end of this message.

Symantec has developed a Product Vulnerability Response document outlining the process we follow in addressing suspected vulnerabilities in our products. This document is available below.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Symantec Corp.
Permission to redistribute this alert electronically is granted as long as it is not edited in any way unless authorized by Symantec Security Response. Reprinting the whole or part of this alert in any medium other than electronically requires permission from secure@symantec.com.

Disclaimer
The information in the advisory is believed to be accurate at the time of publishing based on currently available information. Use of the information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are no warranties with regard to this information. Neither the author nor the publisher accepts any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, this information.

Symantec, Symantec products, Symantec Security Response, and secure@symantec.com are registered trademarks of Symantec Corp. and/or affiliated companies in the United States and other countries. All other registered and unregistered trademarks represented in this document are the sole property of their respective companies/owners.